UK ministers scrap plan to curb jury trials after legal backlash

The UK government has abandoned plans to create a new tier of the Crown Court in which judges, sitting without a jury, would have tried defendants facing sentences of up to three years in prison. Justice Secretary Alex Norris announced the reversal on 3 October 2026, saying the government would "change course" after what he described as strong opposition from the legal profession and MPs.

What was proposed, and what has been dropped

The abandoned proposal, known as the Crown Court Bench Division (CCBD), was first recommended in July 2025 by retired judge Sir Brian Leveson as part of a government-commissioned review into reducing Crown Court delays. It would have created a new division in which cases likely to attract a sentence under three years were decided by a judge alone, rather than by a jury, according to Wikipedia's entry on the proposal and reporting from aol.co.uk.

According to aol.co.uk, the plan was first put forward under former Justice Secretary David Lammy. Lammy was succeeded by Alex Norris after Andy Burnham became Prime Minister and reshuffled the cabinet, with Norris taking over as Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice on 21 July 2026, legal-sector outlet Legal Futures reported. Norris, a former trade union organiser, is a non-lawyer in the post of Lord Chancellor.

Norris confirmed that the full Bench Division plan, covering a wide range of either-way offences, will not go ahead. In its place, judge-only trials will be retained only for a limited category of especially lengthy and technical fraud and financial cases, where judges determine a jury would be unsuitable, aol.co.uk reported.

Why the plan was scrapped

Opposition came from senior legal figures. Geoffrey Robertson, founding head of Doughty Street Chambers, accused the government of abandoning what he called a centuries-old right and argued the change would not meaningfully reduce the court backlog, according to aol.co.uk. The Bar Council, Law Society and Criminal Bar Association also raised objections, and aol.co.uk reported that some Labour MPs had told the Prime Minister the plans were "madness."

Spanish outlet Demócrata, summarising the UK debate for its readers, reported that critics' central argument was that delays stem from under-resourcing of the courts rather than from the jury system itself, and framed the reversal as the government acknowledging that argument while keeping other efficiency measures in place.

The scale of the court backlog

The reform drive was motivated by a rising backlog of Crown Court cases in England and Wales. Demócrata, citing official data, reported 80,829 pending cases as of June 2026 — described as the highest level on record — of which 23,706 had been open for at least a year, with a median case age of 203 days. Aol.co.uk separately reported the backlog stood at almost 81,000 cases and was projected to reach 100,000 without reform.

What remains of the reform package

Several other measures from the original package are being kept. Norris is retaining plans to remove defendants' automatic right to elect a jury trial for some either-way offences such as theft and burglary, and to expand magistrates' courts' sentencing powers, according to aol.co.uk, which was corroborated by Demócrata's account of the same retained measures. Narrow judge-alone trials will continue to apply only to a small number of complex fraud cases, both aol.co.uk and Demócrata reported.

Norris told reporters, as summarised by britbrief.co.uk, that he expects the backlog to begin falling within this Parliament and significantly over the following decade "as a result of the changes we're making," though he did not give a specific reduction target. He said judge-only trials for the broader category of offences were "the most complicated to implement" and risked holding up the rest of the package.

• Scrapped: judge-alone trials for either-way offences carrying sentences up to three years (the Crown Court Bench Division).
• Kept: judge-alone trials for a limited set of complex, lengthy fraud and financial cases.
• Kept: plans to remove defendants' automatic right to elect jury trial for some offences.
• Kept: plans to expand magistrates' courts' sentencing powers.